


your hand, your answer

by bestliars



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Pictures, University of Minnesota Gophers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7360552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bestliars/pseuds/bestliars
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirteen places on campus that Nick thought about kissing Kyle but didn’t, and one place Kyle kissed him. An annotated picture list.</p>
            </blockquote>





	your hand, your answer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thehandsoftime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehandsoftime/gifts).



> The title is a lyric fragment from the song, “Kiss Me On The Bus” by the Replacements, but there is not any actual bus kissing in the story, sorry to disappoint.

**ONE — somewhere along the Gopher Way**

If Nick was asked to make a list of his favorite places on the University of Minnesota Campus he might start with the Gopher Way, which is the name given to the tunnel system connecting different buildings. Nick sort of loves the tunnels. How couldn’t he? The feeling of relief to get inside a warm building after freezing is enough to make anyone fall in love. The reason why they have all these tunnels is to get away from the cold. They weren’t built considering any design principles, they’re purely utilitarian, and honest to god ugly. The tunnels aren’t romantic. They’ve got off-white cinderblock walls with maroon and gold stripes, warm and windowless passages that get you where you need to go.

If it’s winter, and between classes, the tunnels get crowded with people. The only way to get anywhere is to slow down and go with the flow, get lost in it. It isn’t worse than any other main thoroughfare between classes. It isn’t as bad as Coffman around lunch, it doesn’t come close to the bookstore at the start of term. The crowding isn’t unreasonable—not like walking outside in January when it’s twenty-below is unreasonable—they just get full of people hiding from the cold underground.

Nick enjoyed his time walking through the tunnels. They kept him warm, and sometimes there was decent company. There was one semester when every Tuesday and Thursday he and Kyle headed over to the West Bank together. Kyle had a morning class in Carlson, and Nick went early to study in Wilson for a while before lecture. They would get off the bus together and go straight into up into the tunnels. It was so cold. They’d go up the stairs through Wiley, then across the skyway into Blegen, and then down into the Gopher Way. They’d walk through the tunnels together, side by side, not holding hands, but bumping into each other when other people bumped into them. There was a point where they had to go in different directions. Nick would turn away to the library and Kyle would keep going. Whatever conversation they were having would have to end until lunch. Nick was not a fan of that turn.

He would have really liked to kiss Kyle right before went their separate ways. Not a big kiss, no tongue, no romance, just a peck on the cheek before Kyle had to hurry to class. A chaste kiss, like parents on a TV sitcom.

Only they didn’t kiss in public, and a crowded tunnel is definitely public. Kissing is something they keep to themselves, so they have never kissed in the Gopher Way, as great as that might be.

 

**TWO — behind the stairs you pass walking through the Humphrey Center headed to the Carlson Food Court**

Nick liked the tunnels on the West Bank, and thinks they’re more useful than the ones on the East Bank, but he didn’t have tons of reasons to use them. Sometimes he would study at the Wilson Library, and sometimes he would go to the Carlson foodcourt, but there were more convenient libraries and better places to eat. If he was on the West Bank it was probably because Kyle was over there. Kyle’s degree was through the Carlson School of Management, the business school which was responsible for so many people wandering through the West Bank tunnels dressed like professionals, not college kids.

There’s this one part of tunnel that looks sort of nicer, a little tucked away corner with a window looking into a courtyard. Nick has never been in the courtyard, he doesn’t know what’s through that window. But he walked past this spot a bunch of times getting lunch with Kyle, and he would think about pulling Kyle out of the flow of traffic back into that nook. Instead of just eating lunch in the middle of everything they could have a moment to talk, a moment of quiet. He’d have to grab Kyle’s hand to pull him out of the way, and he wouldn’t let go.

And then, if they were already holding hands, already sharing space, they might as well kiss. It would be easy enough. The light’s nice right there. Even in the middle of winter, when there was snow piled up against the window, it seemed like a warm little corner. It looked like it would be a good place to kiss Kyle. Most places look good, even though most of them aren’t. The world’s deceptive like that.

 

**THREE — sitting on one of the really uncomfortable looking benches in front of Blegen**

Nick does not actually think this would be a nice place to sit and have a romantic moment. Concrete is not his idea of comfort. There’s just something about the shape. He could imagine stretching his arm across the back of the bench, and Kyle could lean against him, like sometimes happens on the couch at home.

They could sit there reading something for class, or maybe just sit there. It could be a nice fall day, crisp but not too cold, just enough to enjoy each other's body heat. Nick could look up from his book when it gets too boring and watch all the people walking by ignoring how they're cuddled close. Kyle wouldn't look up from his boring book, he'd keep studying. Nick would get caught off guard by how attractive Kyle looks when he's concentrating, even though it's something he should be used to by now.

He could have kissed the top of Kyle’s head, or the side of his face. If he did that sitting on the couch together Kyle would either ignore him, or glare at him, or turn to kiss him back, depending on his mood and how much homework he had left. Nick wanted to experience that moment of finding out how Kyle reacts to getting kissed, but instead of being in the living room they’d be on a terrible bench in front of Blegen.

If it was a nice enough day for them to sit outside there’s be people all over, walking by, sitting at the tables, enjoying the weather. Fall or spring, it doesn’t matter to Nick, as long as it was warm enough to be outside. It could still be sort of cold. They’re hearty Minnesotans. They could wear scarves. If it was cold then Kyle wouldn’t mind Nick’s arm around him as much.

But on this imaginary day Kyle wouldn’t mind anyway. He wouldn’t care. He’d let them have the sort of moment that’s usually limited to their living room happens in front of anyone walking by, in front of the whole U of M. He wouldn’t worry.

Nick never said this was anything he could ever imagine actually happening. Honestly, those benches look hard enough that he doesn’t actually want it. It’s just a thing he’s thought about.

 

**FOUR — a breakout room in Hanson Hall**

Hanson is a newish building, and it’s nice, very shiny, and clean. All the rooms are sponsored by companies, which is sort of weird, but probably why they’re so nice. There’s a Starbucks on the second floor. It’s mostly Carlson stuff going on, and Kyle’s in there a lot.

The most interesting building feature are all these little breakout rooms in the middle. Sometimes there are groups in them, but a mostly they’re empty and dark. Nick used to lean against the wall, waiting for the class before his to get out, and think about kissing Kyle in one of those rooms.

He’d never actually do it, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. Kyle could sit on the table, and Nick could lean down and kiss him. He wondered if Kyle would wrap his legs around his waist, if it would be comfortable to push Kyle backwards on to the table and be on top of him. That would probably be good. There are a lot of tables in a lot of different rooms that Nick could have imagined them kissing on, but there was something about the breakout rooms in Hanson that he kept on thinking about.

With the glass it would be like they were in a museum case, an exhibit on display. The rest of the building would go about its business, ignoring them, or maybe stopping to watch. Nick doesn’t think he has any real interest in being watched. It’s just that they spend so long making sure that no one is going to see, it was interesting to fantasize about the opposite experience. He doesn’t think he’d like it, but kind of wishes it was a possibility.

Part of it might be that he hated seeing the space going to waste. The idea of breakout rooms for group work or whatever was cool. It seemed useful, something the U might feature about in a brochure bragging about a good education they’re offering. Look. Breakout rooms. Wow.

But it’s only impressive if they’re getting used, and if no one needs them for a class, then kissing might be a good alternative use?

 

**FIVE — the Wilson Library basement study space**

There’s never anyone there. There are much better places to study, places with natural light, and more comfortable chairs. Nick doesn’t really see the appeal of it down there, except that sometimes it’s nice to be somewhere no one else is. That isn’t really a Nick sort of thing to want, that’s a Kyle thing, but he’s spent so much time thinking about what Kyle would want. Some of that need for quiet and aloneness has bled over.

Kyle liked to study down there sometimes. Nick would text asking where he was, and Kyle would say the study space in the basement of Wilson Library, and sometimes, if Nick didn’t have anything better to do, he’d walk across campus to sit next to Kyle. They’d be in their own little carrels, with partitions built into the table to keep their books from getting mixed up, but Nick could stretch out and nudge Kyle’s foot with his own. Kyle would look up from whatever he was working on, and make this face, the _we’re studying, I’m going to ignore you_ face, and pretend to be mad.

It made Nick want to lean over and kiss him. But even though no one else was ever around, two of the walls were still made of glass, and anyone could walk past and see. Kyle wouldn’t consider it an acceptable risk. So Nick would go back to his homework, hooking his ankle around Kyle’s under the table, trying to focus on the words in front of him instead of all the things he didn’t get to do.

 

**SIX — somewhere surrounded by books where no one would find them.**

There are so many places in Wilson Library that would have been great for kissing Kyle. They could find some shelves that come to a dead end, and he could kiss Kyle up against the brick wall. That would be better than kissing against a shelf, which could lead to knocking books off. They’d want to make sure it was a section full of very boring books, about like, agriculture and tax codes, making it less likely that anyone would stumble in and ruin it. But they’d also want to make sure it wasn’t a completely off-putting subject. Nobody wants to make out surrounded by books about the plague.

Actually, Nick doesn’t know if Wilson has many books about infectious diseases — that might be the kind of thing that mostly lives in a science library. There are so many libraries on campus, and Nick didn’t kiss Kyle in any of them, which is some sort of tragedy.

Kissing in the stacks of a library is like, a classic university experience, the kind of thing they put in movies. It’s a shame they never tried it out. Nick almost made this argument to Kyle once, almost as a joke, that they should kiss in the library for tradition’s sake. But he knew how Kyle would react, and decided to spare them both the heartache. Nick didn’t want to date someone who would kiss him in the library, he wants Kyle. He doesn't want someone who's easy, he wants Kyle. He wants Kyle, end of story. A chance to make out in the library doesn't come close everything else they have.

 

**SEVEN— in one of the nooks with vending machines in Wiley**

This does not actually seem like a great place for kissing. Those desk-chair-things aren’t very comfortable, aren’t meant for sharing, and definitely aren’t designed for someone Nick’s height. In general, Nick does not want to kiss Kyle in one of the nooks with vending machines outside the big lecture hall in Wiley. There was one specific time when he really wanted to kiss Kyle in one of those nooks, and it’s what he thinks of every time he walks past them.

It was the middle of a long week. Only Wednesday night, but Nick could tell it was going to be a long week. They played away games the weekend before — Nick can’t remember anymore if they won or lost, he just remembers that they got home and he was so tired, and there was class Monday morning. It was maybe a month into Spring semester, deep enough in that it didn’t feel new, but not to midterms yet. It was the part of winter that feels endless, where even Nick, who likes the cold, was starting to get sick of the relentless chill and the piles of snow getting in his way.

Monday was hard, Tuesday was unpleasant, and Wednesday night he had a long evening lecture. The subject was dry, and the professor was tedious, and it on stretched on forever, from six to eight-thirty, with a fifteen minute break in the middle. Wednesday nights that semester were an ongoing struggle to take notes that would make sense later on instead of falling asleep. Falling asleep would have been so easy, but Nick would have felt bad about it afterwards.

At least he was allowed to have his laptop open — some professors don’t allow computers, because some professors are terrible. Yes, Nick was messing around on the internet, but he was also taking legible notes and not falling asleep. What’s ruder: messing around on the computer or falling asleep?

Usually Nick tried harder to pay attention, but this week was a lost cause. Mostly he was messaging with Kyle, complaining about his night. People think that Nick is an unrelentingly sunny guy, and most of the time they’re right, he’s very positive. But everyone has to have someone they can complain to, and for him that’s Kyle. It’s been Kyle for a very long time. Kyle got to hear all about how boring this class was, and how hungry he was, and how the prospect of getting a prepacked sandwich from the Gopher Express in the skyway was really sad, but also the only thing keeping him going. He was feeling pretty sorry for himself. He’ll blame it on the weather.

The first half of class seemed to last forever, with their break getting pushed back five minutes while the professor finished one set of slides. They were finally let loose and Nick threw himself into the crowd rushing to get out of the lecture hall and find some food.

He got out into the lobby and saw the most beautiful thing imaginable: Kyle, still bundled up from the cold, holding a take out box.

Nick just stopped, stood in front of Kyle, looked down at him hoping this wasn’t a dream. He did try really hard not to fall asleep in that class.

“You sounded really sad so I brought you dinner,” Kyle said, shoving the food at him. Kyle put his arm on Nick’s shoulder and shoved him out of the way, into one of the alcoves, until he was sitting in one of the desk-chairs.

Nick couldn’t stop staring at Kyle.

Kyle tugged at the ends of his scarf.

This was the best thing to happen to Nick all week, all month, all semester maybe. At least that’s what it felt like at the moment.

“Stop being weird,” Kyle said. “Eat your sandwich before you have to go back to class.”

Nick opened the takeout box. Nick looked at the sandwich, then up at Kyle bundled up for the cold, and then back down at the sandwich.

This wasn’t the first time he thought he loved Kyle, but it was still new enough to feel like a revelation. He loved Kyle, and he couldn’t see an end to that. He was going to love Kyle forever. He wanted to kiss Kyle. He wanted to marry Kyle. Kyle brought him dinner. Kyle went all the way to Afro Deli, which meant walking at least two blocks outside the tunnels each way, to buy a Somali steak sandwich and bring it to him.

You don’t walk four blocks in that cold unless you really love someone. Nick would walk miles through a polar vortex for Kyle, and he knows Kyle would do the same. They’ve said “I love you,” they’ve had serious conversations about the future they want to have together, but none of that made as much impression as Kyle bring him the most amazing sandwich in all Minneapolis on a freezing terrible day.

So no, Nick doesn’t actually think one of the nooks with a vending machine would be a good place to make out. He just wishes he could have kissed Kyle that night, or at least said something better, instead of just eating his sandwich and smiling like an idiot.

 

**EIGHT — on the Washington Avenue Bridge**

This one Nick might actually regret, this is something he thinks they could have gotten away with. He’d like to kiss Kyle on the middle of the Washington Avenue Bridge, with the Mississippi River rushing underneath them. He thinks it could be romantic. Walking across the Washington Avenue Bridge around lunch time when it’s busy is nothing special. But when it starts getting dark it’s beautiful.

Depending on when you’re walking there can be a sunset, or twilight settling in. Look one way and there’s the downtown skyline, look the other way and there’s the crazy angles and shiny metal of the Weisman. Minneapolis is a beautiful city, and the Washington Avenue Bridge is a huge maroon and gold slab of metal and concrete right in the middle of it. A lot of people say it’s ugly, but Nick digs it. Those are his colors.

That would be good light to kiss Kyle in. He doesn’t remember walking across the Washington Avenue Bridge with Kyle as the sun set, which doesn’t mean it never happened. They walked across that bridge a lot, any sunset evenings could have blurred in with all the other memories. There must have been a time where they could have stopped halfway across the bridge to lean against the railing, look out at the river, and steal a kiss. There must have been a night that was quiet enough, not too cold, where they weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere.

Even if the perfect situation had presented itself Nick doesn’t know if he would have gone for it anyway, so used to keeping their private life private, not doing anything that they don’t want seen where someone could see it.

Nick assumes that everyone is looking at him because he is super tall and plays hockey. People are usually looking at him. Kyle thinks everyone is looking at him because he is a neurotic little shit. Really, he’s a nondescript young man who does a decent job fading into the background when he tries. Nick thinks that Kyle's perceptions are accurate because he is always looking at Kyle. Why would anyone want to look anywhere else?

The Mississippi is beautiful, the skyline is great, a sunset can be a revelation, but Kyle is Kyle, and Nick would chose him any day. And being with Kyle means not kissing on the Washington Avenue Bridge, or at least that’s what it meant when they were in school. Maybe things are different now, maybe things will be different a few more years down the line. Nick’s in it for the long haul, he can be patient to find out.

 

**NINE — on the couches in the lower level of Coffman Memorial Union**

This is the opposite situation from the benches in front of Blegen. The couches in Coffman are unfairly comfortable. They aren’t long enough that Nick can really lie down, but he doesn’t hold that against them, most places aren’t. Nick has still fallen asleep on one of these couches, feet hanging over the end.

There are couches like this in the main room upstairs, but there are always people up there, which can make it hard to sleep. Nick has tried, half sucessfully, but it isn’t optimal. For real peace and quiet the smart thing to do is go down two levels to the lowest part of the basement built into the river bluff. It’s windowless, and anytime that isn’t lunch it’s very still. These couches might be the best place to nap on campus, at least when it’s cold and you can’t just lie in the grass.

One of these would be a great couch for making out. They’re wide enough that two people could fit together and not be uncomfortably squished. They’re long enough that Kyle could stretch out, and Nick kiss him, and it would be great. Now, obviously that would be a bad idea. Even if the lower level is quiet it’s still the student union, it’s never actually empty, that isn’t a good place for heavy petting. It’s a real shame, those couches are amazing.

Nick is now a grown up NHL player, with his own house, and his own very comfortable couch. When he was picking something out one of the questions he had in his head was, is this couch better than the ones in Coffman? Would it be better for kissing Kyle on? And it is, because he has his priorities in order. The upholstery is very soft, and it actually is long enough that his feet don’t hang off the edge, which is so weird, and so cool. He spent enough money on his couch that he kind of feels bad about. He doesn’t regret the purchase, it really is absurdly comfortable. Kissing Kyle on that couch is so awesome that he actually wound up having sex with Kyle on the couch, which wasn’t part of their original plans for the evening. He’s fairly sure it’s the most amazing piece of furniture he’s ever sat on.

He still thinks about the couches in Coffman sometimes. They weren’t anything fancy. They were ugly, covered in ugly maroon or gold vinyl. They were industrial furnishing, something designed to put up with heavy wear by careless college students. The fact that they were as comfortable as they are is some sort of miracle. He is very happy with his sofa, but sometimes he gets nostalgic for what could have been.

 

**TEN — the Armory**

Nick has never actually been into the Armory. There are lots of buildings on campus that he’s never been into, more that he’s never entered than he has. Most of them don’t look as distinctive as the Armory, most of them he doesn’t know the names of. The Armory is one of the first buildings whose name he learned, except for like Mariucci and the other stuff around the arena. He knew the Armory’s name before he was even a student. He thinks he’d like to kiss Kyle in the Armory. It looks like a castle, or at least the outside does, and it would be cool to kiss Kyle in a building that looks like a castle. He’d be into kissing Kyle in a building with any sort of architecture, including Rapson, the weird looking architecture department building that he’s never been in. But kissing in a castle would be extra cool.

 

**ELEVEN — on the picturesque bridge over the railroad tracks**

It’s just a footbridge, wooden planks suspended over the tracks, held up by the maroon and gold painted metal. It’s a shortcut to get out to Dinkytown, and one of the prettier sights on campus. When Nick was a freshman living in Sanford he would take that bridge to and from class all the time. And the next year Kyle was in the same dorm, and he used to walk Kyle back there from wherever they were before, and they used to eat in the dining hall together.

That year “dating” was still a new thing. They were something before, something important, something Nick really liked being. But being in the same place, getting to see each other every day meant they could grow into something different. Before, they saw each other sometimes, and texted a lot, but once they were both at the U it all became clearer, in a weird, not exactly clear way. The feelings became more obvious, but what they wanted to do about any of that was still complicated.

So dating, but only in quotations, not for real. Not so that anyone would be able to tell unless they were told what to look for. Hanging out with intensity, and kissing where no one would see. They would go out for dinner together, but that’s just dinner. And if Kyle got sick of his roommate and wound up crashing at Nick’s apartment sometimes that made sense.

Sometimes Kyle would sleep over, and in the morning they’d walk over to the Sanford dining hall to eat breakfast. Nick would wait around, drinking coffee and eating more scrambled eggs while Kyle ran up to his room to get changed and grab his stuff. They would walk towards their classes together, cross the footbridge over the railroad tracks, and then go their separate ways. They never stopped in the middle to look at the city around them, or the cold blue sky. Nick never put his hand on Kyle’s face then leaned down to kiss him in the early morning light. He only ever thought about it.

There was always a class to get to, or practice, or a bicyclist who was coming through and they had to get to one side or get run over. There were always other things going on, and good reasons why they shouldn’t have kissed right there even if they did have all the time in the world. Nick doesn’t feel bad about it, not when they did have so many nice times they had walking over that bridge together.

 

**TWELVE — on fourth street**

Okay, so, this isn’t technically on campus, but close enough. If University Avenue is the dividing line between campus/not campus, Fourth is just a block further, and it’s still basically campus, just with a few extra things mixed in. Fourth Street is kind of a vague place to want to kiss Kyle, but it’s a convenient way of describing lots of places Nick would like to kiss Kyle. He’d like to kiss Kyle at Annie’s, waiting for late night secret milkshakes and french fries. He would like to kiss Kyle when Kyle makes fun of him for ordering weird things at Mesa. Kyle can have the pepperoni, Nick is going to get a slice of tortellini pizza, a slice of chicken cordon bleu, and a slice of spicy chicken burrito. Nick likes adventurous pizza toppings, and he loves the faces Kyle makes watching him eat.

Neither of them are in school anymore, but they still wind up walking down Fourth Street. They work out on campus, and spend summer afternoons walking down Fourth, trying to decide where to get lunch. Kissing along Fourth Street is still something that could happen. Nick is holding on to this idea.

He would like to kiss Kyle in front of the Positively Fourth Street mural, with flat Bob Dylan’s weird eyes watching them. Or well, maybe _like_ is the wrong word for this. He doesn’t actually want to have a creepy painted folk dude watch them, but he would like for it to be an option.

 

**THIRTEEN — on the grass by the ugly statue**

Campus looks beautiful and green for about two weeks in the fall and two weeks in the spring, if they’re lucky. The rest of the time it’s dying grass or snow or mud. Nick likes the colors of the leaves, the winter monochrome, and the slow rebirth of spring. But those two weeks at the start and the end of the year that can almost pass as summer are awfully pretty. Those couple of weeks are the best spent outside.

There’s this one statue that Nick doesn’t even know how to describe, it’s just huge chrome U shapes held together. It almost looks like a jungle gym, but Nick knows he isn’t supposed to climb it, so he never has, even though it’s tempting. Instead he’s just sat on the grass on the tiered terrace in front of it, leaning on the cement wall, his legs hanging out over the sidewalk. If he had time to kill between classes he’d always sit outside if it was nice enough, trying to enjoy it as long as he could in the fall, trying to soak up what he had been missing out on in the spring.

There was this one day Nick remembers from the spring of his sophomore year where he and Kyle spent all afternoon sitting on the grass in front of the really ugly statue. There was something else they were supposed to be doing that afternoon, but it got canceled. Nick can’t remember what they were supposed to be doing, just that he was really excited to spend time out in the beautiful weather with Kyle instead.

Nick studied for a while before giving up and lying in the grass with his eyes closed. He tried to quiz himself for the test he was going to take. He defined terms in his head. The sun was hot against his face, almost blinding.

He got sick of trying to remember vocabulary words and pulled Kyle down to lie next to him, making him drop the book in the process. Nick opened his eyes to see Kyle make a weird face at him, but it was a good weird face. They had finals coming up, but Nick wasn’t too worried, and then they’d have some time off before summer classes started. Kyle was going to be moving out of the dorms for next year, and they were going to share an apartment with some other guys. The weather was just going to get warmer, and the days longer, and the future had so many things for them to be excited about.

He could have kissed Kyle, and that would have made him happy, but not any happier than just lying there was already making him. Maybe, like, incrementally happy, but not happier enough to make a real difference. Just knowing that Kyle likes kissing him, that he’d get to kiss Kyle later, once it started to get dark and they went inside, that was enough.

The next day Nick was pink from the sun, but he didn’t regret anything.

 

**AND ONE — the McNamara Alumni Center, in the future**

Nick is pretty sure he went inside the McNamara center a couple of times when he was a student, to look like a model student athlete and shake hands with people who gave money. He thinks Kyle may have even been there too? He thinks there might have been really good hors d’oeuvres? The whole occasion is pretty vague, it didn’t leave much of a mark on him. It is a cool building.

It’s a cool enough building that he can understand why people decide to have one of the biggest days of their life there. In the school year McNamara is full of forgettable things, but on summer weekends it turns into one of the top wedding venues in the Twin Cities. Nick doesn’t really know the couple getting married. It’s a girl Kyle had a bunch of classes with, and they stayed in touch after graduation, enough to score an invitation to the wedding. Nick is there strictly as a plus one.

They’ve reached an age where summer is wedding season. It started last year, but this summer it seems like there’s something every weekend, former teammates, old friends, all lining up to get hitched. They’ve been to two already since getting back in town.

Nick would have had to missed a high school buddy’s thing if they’d gone another round in the playoffs. He would have kept playing, but it was good to be back for this as well. He got drunk trading embarrassing teenage stories, and Kyle made fun of him while driving home. They’ve got another wedding in two weeks, and then they’re headed out East for Mikey and Emily’s big day at the end of the month. Now that’s going to be a party.

Tonight’s thing isn’t as much fun, but it’s alright. Nick’s starting to have opinions about weddings, about the details. As he’s gotten more familiar with the possible ways a wedding can play out he’s started to think about what he likes best, what he’d like for himself. It’s a sweet ceremony, not too long, and seems to reflect the personalities of the couple. Nick went in sort of knowing the bride, and having met the groom at a party once, he thinks, but it could have been her last boyfriend. After the ceremony he thinks he sort of understands of what kind of people they are. It sure sounds like they’re really in love.

The reception is very elegant, swankier than Nick’s taste, but not taken to an uncomfortable extreme. The bride works for Target corporate, doing something impressively important for someone their age, at least according to Kyle. The food is good. Nick is not a picky eater, but this is definitely good. He’s half curious about who the caterer is, but refuses to go that far down the rabbit hole.

There’s dancing, but they don’t dance. No one wants them to dance. It wouldn’t be fun for anyone. Kyle catches up to Carlson friends he barely gets to see. Nick stretches his legs out in front of him, and looks up at the soaring ceiling of the hall. The height is enough to make even him feel tall. The room is all angles, wood panelling interrupted by skylights and windows. It’s starting to get dark, but Nick can still see bits of blue sky through the glass.

It’s a big room. They’ve probably got enough people to fill it up if they wanted. They’ve been focused on getting another type of ring for the last few years, but before too many summers pass they’re going to get around to making it all official. If they had a wedding here it could be a real big deal, with all the cousins and former teammates they can come up with.

Nick doesn’t know what he thinks about that. He isn’t sure that would be right for them, they’re very low-key people. All the friends’ weddings they’ve been attending has been helpful, sort of a tour through different possibilities.

This is a very beautiful building, and he likes the idea of getting married on the campus where they fell in love, but it might be too on the nose. They’re a block from Mariucci here. That might be too close. It might be better to have some degree of geographic separation for recognize the next stage of their live.

There are still people on the dancefloor when they decide head out. There’s a tunnel that goes from McNamara to the parking garage they’re in, but it wasn’t a tunnel either of them used when they were in school, and they’re too tired to explore a route underground. Someone could get really lost down there. And it’s a nice night for a stroll outside. It was almost too hot earlier — too hot for Minnesota anyway, even if they have got used to it in Florida. Now it’s cooled off, with a decent breeze in the air. They walk the long way around the building, getting their bearings in the dark.

A train goes by on Washington, a rush of light and sound running through the night headed downtown. There’s a plaza in front of the building with a bunch of tables and benches. They used to go to the Chipotle across the street, then bring their burritos over here to eat. That’s still something they do, not just when they were in school, but all the summers since then as well.

They walk up to the corner then stop, waiting for the light to cross Walnut to change. There aren’t any cars coming. Even in the middle of the day this isn’t a busy street. There isn’t any reason not to jaywalk, except that jaywalking is against the law.

“That was fun, but now I’m tired,” Kyle says.

Nick nods; he’s tired too.

“Weddings are exhausting,” Kyle says. “There’s so much planning involved.”

“You’ll be good at it,” Nick says, not really thinking.

There are people on the patio of the bar across the street. He can half remember what it was like before they tore it down his Junior year. It used to be a bar on the corner, and a pizza place in a strip mall, and a parking lot. Now it’s ugly gray and yellow apartment building with a bar on the bottom.

Kyle kisses him. He puts his hand on the back of Nick’s neck to pull him down, and Nick leans in automatically. Kissing Kyle is familiar. It’s amazing, but imperfect. This isn’t something they’re ever going to stop getting better at. It isn’t something they’re ever going to stop doing. Like, this kiss will end and they’ll cross the street eventually, but there are so many kisses to look forward to. Kyle’s mouth is soft and warm against his, but it isn’t the end of the world when he takes a half step back and takes his hand away from where it had settled on Nick’s waist.

Nick stands up straight, trying to get his bearings. He looks at the light. They must have missed the walk sign completely while they were kissing, because now it’s a red hand flashing, telling them not to start walking. Nick doesn’t mind waiting. That kiss was worth it.

A train goes by in the opposite direction as before, headed to Saint Paul.

Kyle sighs. He takes Nick’s hand, and pulls him into the intersection. Nick lets himself get led, still feeling dazed. Kyle doesn’t let go of his hand until they have to get in the car. Kyle drives them home. When they get there, Nick’s going to kiss him again.


End file.
